Reflections Displayed in Black Hair
In the poem, "Black Hair", Gary Soto depicts a moment in the narrator's childhood which epitomizes himself. The narrator applies various intense representations of himself at the tender age of eight. There are three circumstantial images, "The game before us was more than baseball/ It was a figure--Hector Moreno/ Quick and hard with turned muscles, His crouch the one I assumed before an altar of worn baseball cards in my room." These images provide us with the notion that baseball has an illustrious and significant meaning in the boy's life. The first image, "The game before us was more than baseball," reveals that the game is like his retreat from the world. He cherished this place like a sanctuary, a sacred place of inspiration.